No, I don't think I am going to post on the new iPhone because most likely you guys have already heard/read about it and don't need my ramblings on it.

Would you hang the above graphic on your wall? Maybe blow it up to nice size and hang it above your couch. When people asked about you could make up an insightful story and how it represents some random thing. Or you could tell them the truth, that you used IOGraph to track your computer mouse's movement for the day.

Yes, that is what it is! The software will track your mouse's movement and create a graphical representation of it. The circle represent the points at where your mouse was at rest.

I am definitely going to try this out because of a few reasons. 1. That is pretty cool. 2. I would like to see what my patterns look like (if you check out their Flickr page you can see someone's photoshop session and what we do over and over again, like go to the layers palette). 3. I am curious at the files it outputs and if it would really be able to blow it up to a giant size (raster vs vector) From the look at a photo on a Flickr Page it looks entirely possible.

[via Unplggd]

This is the book I am currently reading. But with these types of books where it is a series of small articles, when I say reading it means more "when I pick it up i'll flip through the pages until an interesting title catches my eye or I find an article the length I would like to read."

I am not that far into it yet so the verdict is still out. We'll see how it goes and i'll have to put an update up later.

The thrill of victory…the agony of defeat. Design Disasters captures the flip side of success, bringing insight, solace, and energy to the act of failure. Not just any failure. Design failure. So public. So humiliating. How do designers who are really, really good (we swear!) turn a disaster into a triumph?

So, are any of you reading any good books? Design or anything else? What should I read next?

Pick it up from Amazon
Review from core77
Review from The Designer's Review of Books

image from core77 because my camera is at the office.

There is always the saying the gift that keeps on giving. Do you have someone you know that loves posters? Do they have a nice collection going? Would they love for you to add another to their collection?

Check out the top poster by Ty Mattson. It is just one of many over at Lift Up Nashville and the $10 you spend on it goes towards helping out in Nashville from the recent floods. They have a lot of other posters but that one is my favorite. Go check them out. Get a cool poster and help out. 12x18 and printed on a digital press.

If you have slightly deeper pockets and/or a love for Hatch Show Prints you can pick up their poster. It is $100 (100% goes to flood relief) but it is hand printed in an edition of 250 from woodcuts (no new age digital presses here). That store also has a version of Ty's that is 18x24 if you want to fill your walls a little easier.

Go get 1 or 2 or 5 and help Nashville out

[via Unplggd]

Up for today is the always awesome House Industries. If you need a large cast aluminum ampersand, some designer building blog, or the always sexy Eames typeface they've got you covered.

They used to have a really cool mousepad as well but I don't see it for sale anymore.

Check out the rest of their merchandise.

Now that my technical difficulties are over I can get back to business.

If you are in need of a gift for the designer in your life, and quick...Veer is the place to go. Check out their merch here.

They have great apparel, accessories, mugs, portfolios, pins etc. All of them are guaranteed* to put a smile on someone's face.

A few of my favorites are above. The KERN and TYPO GRAPHY sweatshirts and some faux ampersand cufflinks.

I have a hand full of their pins from a HOW conference as well, which were partly an inspiration to a project at school as well. We made a lot of buttons and sold them at our AIGA fundraiser and actually made some good money on them.

*I really can't guarantee this, but I am 98% sure it will!

I am a big fan of the small Moleskine Notebooks, I like gridded page and the Kraft paper cover. I often end up drawing on them or leaving them plain. However, I always thought it would be cool to do some custom ones.

Normally, that would take a lot of work. You would have to buy all the Moleskines (and lets face it, they are not cheap) and then screen print them all.

Wouldn't it be nice if it was easier? BAM Scout Book!

My creative director picked up one of these for me when she went to a printing show in chicago, theirs is to promote AIGA Chicago Design week, and it's pretty snazzy. So I looked up the company on the back.

Scout will print your notebooks with your own graphics on them starting with an order of 50 book (for $195 or $3.90 a book). That pricing can be a bit steep for some, but for a custom printed notebook that really is a steal. You can get the price down to 90 cents a book if you are ordering over 1000 (good for trade show giveaways, or just any promo).

Go check them out. They use 100% recycled papers and soy based inks, so you'll get some green karma along the way.

I'll put them on my list, and maybe some day I could get some cool "The Large Bear" notebooks made up and run a big giveaway. One day...

The internet never ceases to amaze me. When viewing the post on swissmiss yesterday with the typography flow chart, one of the comments pointed to the poster above. This is another designers response to Julian's poster. Instead of giving you a lot of choices, you are left with only one answer for everything: Helvetica.

Love the colors on this one.

I couldn't find a lot of info on Ron, but here is a link to the Picasa gallery that holds the image.

[via swissmiss comment section ]

This is a pretty awesome poster created by Julian Hansen from Denmark. If you don't know what typeface to use you can use this handy flowchart to find what you seek. Click on it to enlarge it or go to Julian's site to see the full version

[via swissmiss ]

This has been in my "to post" list for quite awhile and by the awesome feature of how Safari fills in your address bar and my need to go to Office Depot, I once again came across The Office of the Tooth Fairy.

When I was a kid and we lost a tooth we put it in a film canister, the black with the gray top, and that went under our pillow. When we woke up the money would be in the canister for us and the tooth would be mysteriously gone. I still remember when I had to clean the tooth up after it came out because it came out while eating a Carmellow bar and it was covered in chocolate and caramel. Great memories (although teeth do freak me out a bit in general) and I will always remember that film canister.

Memories like that are great but on the other hand I can't get over the shear beauty of these "official" letterpress Office of the Tooth Fairy certificates. I drooled over them the first time and once again I am. They thought of everything, the bag for the tooth, extremely detailed record keeping, the deposit envelope (although I might make one out of a film canister, heck my kids won't even know what film is...). I know I am sucker for letterpress in general, but these are fantastic. I have always been tempted to order, and now they have extra sheets so you can keep track of multiple children easily. Which was kind of the reason I held back. To buy for multiple children at $16 a set, was a little pricey, especially when I don't have kids yet. Now with the extra sheets, I can pick up one kit, a few extra record sheets and keep them for the future (plus one just to keep for myself).

You can order online or find a store near you. I just saw that there was one sort of nearby, but since the extra sheets are new, i'll probably order online and save the hassle. $16 for the first set, extra sheets are $6 each or they have packages of 5 and 10. Shipping is reasonable too at $1.50. Go get it!

P.S. Could they have picked better colors! Love the brown and blue. I have been trying to get some clients to use this combo forever.

"I always say 'beer me.' It gets a laugh, like, a quarter of the time."

Today I have beer on the mind. I picked up a nice cold growler at lunch to take up to my sister's this weekend and then I went out for a beer with a coworker after work (plus the bar was doing a free appetizer buffet, score!). I came across this beer tonight and it seemed great for a post. First, because I enjoy the packaging. Second, because I love beer and third because it kind of goes along with the whole Earth Hour this past weekend.

I've talked about beer before but Cascade Green is a pretty interesting beer. Landor in Sydney apparently held the meeting at the zoo to get in the "green" mood which is awesome. Plus, they have made this a "green" beer by changing some of their processes and buying carbon offsets (which is another discussion for another time, since I don't fully agree with the offsets idea). None the less, I do applaud them for trying to make the beer in a more environmentally friendly way.

So, if you are in Australia, check out this beer and see what it is like. I know I will be enjoying my beer this weekend which happens to be my local breweries 100% certified organic beer.

Sidenote: I really hope you know the quote in the beginning of the post...

[pictures from the dieline]

Today I have had the beach on the mind. It was a long chain of events that got it on my mind but then I remembered this awesome post on swissmiss, and about a really cool new tool called the Willysphere. I wanted to post it back then, but it wasn't available anywhere, so you'd get all excited about it (like I did) then have no way to get them.

Well they are finally available in the US!

The Willyshpere is a sand shaping tool invented by a guy from the Netherlands. The creator won second place in a "Best Idea in the Netherlands" contest for the product. Basically you move them in a circular motion on well packed sand or snow, and the slight curve in the tool will create different size spheres. Check out the video to see it in action, and just how insane of a project you can make out of it.

You can get them here, for $14.95 (regular $20) for a set of 4 of them with free shipping. You'll be able to make 20, 30, 40 and 50cm diameter spheres. So not as big as he said in the video, up to 1m, but still a pretty good size and more manageable for the everyday user. I am ordering a set for sure, and can't wait for the warm weather to get here and try them out (I need something else to do when there isn't enough wind for my kite, and plus, these are beyond cool). I am really happy they made it a reasonable price too since it is such a simple product, this way everybody can pick up a set and play on the beach all day. Pick up a set for yourself, friends, family, kids, anyone who would love making shapes in the sand all day.

So this is something I have been wanting to post about for awhile, but it kept slipping my mind. But, yeah, this is totally on my wishlist. Although my wife is not the biggest fan, so it may take longer then planned.

This is the amazing Donkey Kong wall graphic from Blik. What is Blik you might ask (ironically that is their web address too, whatisblik.com)? They make vinyl wall graphics and are probably the leading company doing this. The graphics are fantastic. They have officially licensed graphics from Nintendo, Eames, Threadless, other artists, and tons of other great ones.

So I have been craving the Kong one. It is made with reStik, which is the kind of vinyl you can take down and put back up. How awesome is that? It is $65 for a set, but if you can reuse it, it's worth it. Unfortunately, the image at the top is most likely made with multiple sets. They recently redid their website, and I miss 2 great features it had. 1. It used to have more photos from people who have bought them, there was a great donkey kong one on a light grey wall wrapped around a corner (they have it as the icon if you search "kong" you'll see it) Found it! 2. It had a little graphic that showed what you could do with one kit, then two, then three, to show you how elaborate you could make it. Essential for this type of kit where you really need to see what you could do with one if you are on a budget, obviously not making the show stopper above.

What is with the Mega Man picture you ask? Yeah that's right, Mega Man coming soon, killer. If I had a perfect world, I would have my own studio, old school Mario in one room, Kong in another, Mega Man in another. I doubt I would get any work done though, since I would just sit there and play my NES on the biggest TV I could while blasting the Double Dragon theme song.

Ok, back to a point. If you have checked them out in the past, go again, because they are adding amazing things. If you haven't been before, go now, and see how you can spice up your place (these are key for rentals since they are removable). I would really like to see how the reStik works, how many times you can reapply it etc. One day, my wall WILL be Donkey Kong, one day. The wall behind me is begging for it right now...

I have been hearing from my friends and family in Michigan (where I am from) about the storm that hit them yesterday, and it has me thinking about snow. I love the stuff. I don't mind driving in it, if no one else is on the road to hit me, and if the city plows the roads (but they never do, do they own a plow? I don't think so). I wouldn't have minded to get some hear instead of the rain that we got.

This is a great poster called First Snow by Power Slide. It encompasses probably a perfect day for me, and while some might say it looks bitter and cold, I feel that it looks refreshing. Amazing what you can do ith just 2 colors, gotta think outside the normal realm of color (since when you screen print, every color means you gotta print the entire run AGAIN).

When I saw the Collect bookcase from Normann Copenhagen I was instantly drawn to it. The fantastic color, the woodgrain showing through, how smooth it looked. It just made me want to touch it.

It looks like it could be at home in a cabin, in an office, in a sitting room, kid's room, anywhere. Although I would like to see how it looks like filled with books or whatever else you would put in it. It is such a beautiful object right now, I hope it wouldn't detract from it.

Once again, this is why I need a studio space and/or workshop. I want to run out there grab some plywood (although this is made with green pine) and make one. One day...

It is 55" x 55" and 2,700 Euro ($3700 USD, another reason why I would like to go make one)

[via Design*Sponge]

It's the last day of Free Font Week. Hopefully I've added a couple of typefaces to your arsenal that you might have otherwise been lacking. Typefaces that might only fill a small niche, but when you need them, you have them.

Last up is Lot. Nice and chunky, the "C" looks like Pac-Man and the "Q" and "W" are big and beautiful. Have a great weekend!

Today I want to show you Learning Curve 2.0. It never hurts to have a handwriting typeface up your sleeve. I've used a couple of them in various projects, sometimes it's just what you're looking for.

Next up is Anivers. Great looking typeface, looks really versatile. Fantastic Asterisk. Regular weight is free, but you have to pay for other weights.

League Gothic is a revival of the old classic, Alternate Gothic No. 1. It's is part of the Open Source Type Movement (which sounds like a fantastic idea to me, check it out).

Ovalian is a bit different and far from what I normally use. But that is what drew me to it. Obviously, I am not going to set a book in it, but it would be a great addition to a logo or for some really large scale signage. (Free Use)

Free Font Week - Monday

I've posted a few fonts here and there that are available to you out there in the past and I thought it was about time to give you an entire week of it. There are always those projects out there that need a typeface that is slightly different, something out of the norm, but they're not always easy to find. So hopefully these might help you on your journey

P.S. As a personal note, I often feel that the "Q" and the "&" make me fall in love with a font. Doesn't hurt to have a really good looking font poster either.

Above is Quicksand, looks great, can't wait to use it. As with any free font make sure the usage license on it if you plan on using it commercially. You're safe with Quicksand, a note from Andrew "Feel free to use it commercially as it is license free. Cheers!”

I often read a great design blog called AisleOne, written by Antonio Carusone. He is a great designer, blogger, etc, and recently he also has started designing skateboards. His first one was the Hello and the new one is the 39 Longboard.

I love this board! I don't skateboard, I have trouble staying on things that aren't attached to my feet, but I love it. The shape, color, type, wheels, everything is fantastic. Looks like it would fit right in with the color scheme here too.

If you've got some free time, go check out his boards, and go check out his blog. Lots of great info and work being shown over there.

$160 + Shipping for the complete board